Gen 3 Pro Vise Tension
- This topic has 24 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 03/22/2022 at 2:40 pm by
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I have the latest gen 3 pro vice and for the first time I recently had to clean it out because it was grindy and I had to use the tensioner on the weakest setting. I’ve always felt it was designed too tight. But after using some Nano oil when I reassenbled it it is very smooth again but tesioner still useless. . I still have to use it on the weakest tension setting so I might try removing one washer from the stack of OEM washers in there now since the tensioner has little effect. I always feel I’m going to snap something like the lever. I just cleaned it last week and I wish I had already read this thread, but pulling it apart again is easy enough. Its the fully covered model so I got around a year out of it before cleaning. One Youtube disassembly thread I watched showed the guy not replacing the round foam strip under the jaws and he replaced it with a piece of folded tape. It seems thats the place where diamond dust still gets easily into the vice falling onto the cam. But I’ll pull one washer which might make my tensioner useful again because I always have to keep it in the same spot so whats the point of it? A thicker knife would be a bear for me to clamp down the way it is now at the weakest setting. My waashers are probably weaker now from when it was a new new unit since its a year old. Thanks for the post as its worth a try for me.
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Before and after pics with one washer removed. First pic is where tensioner was maxed out at the minus sign (least tension I could put on the knife).
2nd pic is with the one washer out. Now tensioner has an adjustment to it. I’ll run a few different knives through and see if it works ok with a washer removed.
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I didn’t see whether Clay or Kyle had responded. Sounds like you maybe should send it in or get their thoughts. You could send them a reference to this forum post to their service email, if you don’t think you have resolved the issue.
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After removing one pair of washers I took the thinnest blade that I have.
Tensioner adjusted to 50% I could lift the whole Gen 3 Pro and the stones by holding the knife
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Lay, nice looking set of micro adjusters there . . :o)
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I just took my Pro3 vise down for the first time today. I purchased the Pro 3 a couple of weeks ago, have sharpened a LOT of knives since. It was getting gritty and hard to move. It was time.
I followed the tutorial on the previous page, and just thought I’d note that there have been some changes since the 2020 version of this vise.
The main one is the cam follower that rides on the tensioning cam:
The follower body is now made of an engineering resin–looks and feel like Delrin–and the actual follower is an SS roller. The bit that holds the cupped washers is also Delrin, as are most of the parts aside from the rollers, cams and the jaws themselves.
Very well made! I don’t happen to have any dry wax bike lubes around the shop, but do have some Bike Aid–previously known as Dri-Slide–which is a dry MoS2 lube. It does not play well with aluminum due to a potential for galvanic corrosion (not likely a problem here), so I kept it off the few aluminum parts and used a Q-Tip to apply it sparingly and only where I wanted it.
Vise now operates smoothly and clamps firmly–just like new!
I sharpened two very thin bladed knives yesterday and was able to get them clamped firmly using only the paper shims that came with my Pro G3 and at the lowest tension setting!
The simplicity of this job and the payback from doing it makes this worth doing whenever I feel grit in the action.
Doesn’t sound anything like my Gen 3 Pro. My cam follower is a flat plate. You might try taping off the exposed areas of your vise. Here’s what I did:
If you are a reloader, you might also try lubricating the cam and follower with resizing lube. Other lubes will help, but will lose their effectiveness fairly quickly. Resizing lube is designed for high pressure applications like swaging and will resist being displaced by pressure. Of course, an occasional squirt of dri-lube works too.
Howdy, TC.
The flat-plate follower was what I saw in the tutorial for breaking down the 2020 version of the Gen 3. When I saw that my my first thought was to polish that plate like I would a contact surface in a trigger group, then use a high-pressure MoS2 lube for it. I was pleased to see the roller follower on my new vice!
I’m not panning the use of engineering resins in the vice. It’s a great product for the purpose.
I’ll use some painter’s tape to mask off my vice as you show. I’m sure that reason mine got gritty so quickly was from breaking in my new stones–that, and I’m kinda sensitive to things like that. If I can easily fix it, I don’t hesitate. I’m not intimidated by mechanical things–I fix them for a living–and I’ve taken every gun I own apart as soon as I got it home to see how it works and if there’s anything I can improve.
With the originally released versions of the Gen 3 cam action vise the vise sides were open exposing the cam itself. That version also used a classic spring for tension. For that version it was prudent to tape up the sides to keep the action clean and free. The newer Gen 3 vise versions, released since then, have evolved with a redesigned vise body that is pretty much enclosed. I haven’t needed to tape these up. That version vise with the enclose body did away with the spring and was re-engineered with the flat resin-like cam follower and Belleville washers. (The jaw designs also evolved with the vise version upgrades).
The latest Gen 3 vise version released, maybe a year or so ago now, like the one Timm has, included an internal design upgrade with the new roller cam follower and a slightly different piston using a taller stack of Belleville washers.
With the enclosed body vise version, I can go quite a while between needing vise breakdown, cleaning and lubricating as a part of regular maintenance practice. Depending on use, of course. That was, until I was breaking in a new set of diamond stones. By the time I had these new stones where I liked them the vise was feeling like you described, Timm. I had to do a teardown.
I too, tear apart everything just to see how they works.
Marc
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